Artificial intelligence won’t overtake humans as of now

MUMBAI: Self-aware and self improving computers will not overtake the human race in our lifetimes, according to IBM Research Director Arvind Krishna. Krishna heads the organisation that gave the world Watson, the Jeopardy-winning cognitive computing system which is now being used by doctors to help diagnose cancer.

"To get to this singularity, as they call it, you need a machine that knows everything. I know how to make an AI (artificial intelligence) machine that knows what we teach it. I can't even conceive of an AI machine that goes beyond what it's been taught.

I would predict to you that in 'our living lifetimes' that will not happen," Krishna told ET. Engineer-entrepreneur Elon Musk and scientist Stephen Hawking, among others, have called for greater caution in using artificial intelligence. Musk said with artificial intelligence "we are summoning a demon" and called it humanity's greatest existential threat. Krishna said the world is years away from developing a computer that can beat the Turing test, the Holy Grail for artificial intelligence programmers.

The IIT-Kanpur graduate is the first Indian to head the research division in its 70-year history and the 11th to hold the position. IBM has a dozen research labs across the world, including one in Bengaluru. Some of the inventions from the 3,000-people strong research division include the automated teller machine, the floppy disk, the hard drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database and the Fortran programming language.

IBM needs to balance two requirements while picking projects - the potential strategic focus of the company in ten years and a need to give its "really smart people" a bit of leeway. "I want a third of our ideas to become really impactful on IBM as a company, from another third I would like to get some impact. And I would expect that a fraction won't be useful because we chose too hard a problem," Krishna said.

IBM chooses hard problems because "everyone could solve the easy ones". IBM expects its research organisation to open newer business lines. The total size of the IT market, its traditional stomping ground, is about $1.2 trillion and the company expects developments such as Watson to open an additional $2 trillion of potential business.

The size of the market means Krishna does not worry about missed bets but about the speed of his investments in potentially market-changing technologies and that investments in some cutting-edge projects may not pay off Krishna said he wished the company had begun to invest sooner in cloud-computing technology. "It's not just about missing things, or not investing. It's also about speculative investments.

The ones you do that people look at you and think, 'Are you crazy'?" Krishna named IBM's investment in quantum and neuromorphic computing as its speculative investments.

The company has one of the largest quantum computing programs in the world. Quantum computing is focused on developing computers based on principles of quantum theory, which explains the nature and behaviour of subatomic particles. Krishna said the research heads in the company work closely with its business heads to understand the needs of customers